AInland waterway transport provides an environmentally friendly alternative for the transport of goods in those areas where an inland waterway infrastructure is present. Western Europe has such a network, with the river Rhine as an important backbone.

MARIN is involved in different projects to improve inland ship design and/or inland ship performance in specific situations and by a design for service approach. In this paper several aspects of projects are described: a comparison between the performance of existing inland ships, the optimisation of a hull and a case study for transport of 45’ containers in a container service on inland waterways.